Thing is, I don't see how the stuff from the article ties into their existing business. When I hear "IoT" or "self-driving car" or "Computer Vision" I think about ARM, Google, NVidia and a bunch other brands, but not Intel.

It seems like they're trying to catch up to the leaders of several newly fashionable IT fields while simultaneously pivoting away from their core business. That's why it strongly reminds me of IBM and HP.

Also, for the heck of it, compare the types of news you see on NVidia and Intel websites:

http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/

https://newsroom.intel.com/

Side note: I'm surprised Intel isn't focusing all their effort on the emergence of VR. Proper VR requires a powerful PC, which is one of the areas of computing Intel still dominates (along with NVidia). If they bought Oculus...

To be fair, Intel does have a history in computer vision. They were the original developer of OpenCV, back in the 90s.

As I understand it, Mobileye is the player to beat in this space. They're doing hardware that is specific to the task at hand and, IIRC, they include a good chunk of the software as well. Buying back the talent behind OpenCV would allow them to easily compete in this space.

Well, for one those self driving cars have a few Intel Xeons onboard. Those cars need more processing power than your phone can provide.

Obvious bolt-on to Intel MKL too.